Tag: decluttering

Made some progress

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocyLeave a comment

Kinda lost my mind at the office closet just now, and pulled out a trash bag worth of just the most random shit imaginable that at some point I (possibly my wife, but let’s be real) decided needed to be saved. The above is the “after” picture, and as you can see, it’s still chaos.

Spoiler alert: none of this needed to be saved. Perhaps the lowest item on that scale was the pile of greeting cards I found, all for various events– birthdays, anniversaries, thinking of you, etcetera– all of which were blank. So at some point we … acquired some surplus cards? For some reason? And then just stuck them in the closet, forever? Construction paper so old that it has faded in a lightless closet. Three books of “tracing paper” that has price tags on it that have got to be forty years old. I suspect we moved these books of tracing paper from our previous house.

I’ve been looking for a project; I’m going to liquidate this fucking closet over the next couple of days.

Anybody want a ukulele? Or, seriously, twenty longboxes of comic books? Please, someone, take my comic books.

Summer Projects mode, maybe

On By Luther M. SilerIn life5 Comments

I am nothing if not encouraging.

I have spent all day thinking of Decluttering, which is kind of a ludicrous term for me to use under any circumstances, but especially under these: I need to get rid of a lot of my shit so that I have room for more shit. I do not at all intend to lead a life of acquiring less shit, which would be the more sensible approach to … well, everything. Most of my ideas for this summer involve either getting rid of shit or clearing any of half a dozen different backlogs of unread books, unplayed video games, TV shows and movies I want to watch, and unbuilt Lego sets. The biggest need around the house, other than cleaning and organizing, is to fix the fence in the back yard that the tree fell on, which my wife is convinced we can do on our own. She has to catch me in the right mood to do it, but that’s at least imaginable.

Part of me really wants to review the book I posted about yesterday, but I don’t think I’m going to. Those of you who figured out what it was (and I apologize for being coy, but sometimes I don’t want a pan to show up on a Google search) may possibly have remembered that I reviewed the first book in the series and did not mention constant terrible writing. I kind of want to pick it back up and reread a couple of chapters to see if it has the same writing problems and I just was able to ignore them for some reason. I am interested to see if it had a different editor than the first book. If so, there are two more books and some novellas, and I really hope he had the original editor for all of those. We’ll see.

Anybody have big plans for Memorial Day? We do not, which is what I want; I need to create some substitute assignments (as in, they substitute for assignments I can’t print, not “I’m planning on needing a substitute”) for Tuesday and Wednesday and finish grading about an inch of final exams, but that and eating a couple of brats pretty much sum up my plans for the day. Let me know if you’ve got anything cool going on.

Basement update

On By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

I’m not showing you pictures of the actual basement until it’s done, but this is what we did to our garage today:

If, uh, you happen to spot a wedding present in there, I promise it’s just the box. Really. Honest. My car is also completely full of cardboard– any cardboard still in this picture is going to get dropped off on Tuesday– because my son is attending something called Cardboard Camp for the next week, unless it gets cancelled because the roads between here and Hogwarts have melted. The one really bad bit of decision making here is that since we’ve filled the garage with stuff we’re going to get rid of in the garage sale we can’t put our cars in there, and as a result my car is going to have to be outside during the impending heat wave, which means if the boy’s camps aren’t cancelled for those two days transporting him there and back is gonna be super fun. I’m psyched about it. Honest.

Also, my knees hate me right now, and there’s still more work to be done downstairs. My wife and son hit the pool for the first time since we put it up after we were done working, but I didn’t because I didn’t trust myself on the ladder. Two days of too much up-and-down on stairs have got me hobbling more than I’m comfortable with at the moment, so I’m not going to put myself in a situation where I’m gonna land on my ass. I think I’ll be living there for most of the next few days, though.

No basement talk tomorrow; there are books to be reviewed!

In which I am old and fat and out of shape

On By Luther M. SilerIn life1 Comment

Spent a few hours cleaning out the basement again, and I’m ready to collapse into a puddle and die. In theory, some of the things that will be replacing the years of cruft we’re tearing out of the basement will help with that, and there’s probably going to be a garage sale next weekend, but … yeah, I’m unhealthy. To a degree that’s frankly kinda scary. My stairs aren’t the friendliest either, mind you– there ain’t a damn thing on ’em cushioning any of the shock to my knees when I go up or down– but today shouldn’t have been as hard as it was.

There will be more tomorrow, including a great amassing of cardboard for a camp the boy is going to next week. At least in theory. My understanding is that it is supposed to be about 700 degrees on Tuesday and Wednesday, so we may have some heat cancellations in our future, which apparently has to be a thing now.

Anyway, I’ll post some pictures of the basement when we’re done with it. And probably of the garage sale too, next weekend. We’ve been here 11 years and haven’t ever done one, so there ought to be a LOT of stuff to get rid of. And very possibly a big-ass dumpster in my driveway the week after. I may have said all of this yesterday; my apologies if I’m repeating myself. I’m fucking tired. 🙂